verbial truth, or the expression of some concentrated feeling. Here is a good specimen verse 174: Thus when he boasts, gape earth, and hide my shame.' We do not pretend to know the meaning of kakǹ yλývn, which is here translated frightened girl,' and we are certain that the old Greek commentators understood it just as little as ourselves; but we cordially assent to Aristarchus, who rejects as spurious the whole passage which answers to verses 191-194 in the translation. The character of Hector is certainly boastful, or, rather, it displays that which one of the Alexandrian critics calls TÒ Taliußolov, a readiness to shift from despondency to exultation, and back again, with every change of fortune. With this one barbaric defect Homer has distinguished the best of the Trojans; a defect which appears nowhere more conspicuously than in his celebrated speech to Polydamas; and it is altogether strange that Niebuhr should have been so far misled by the single sentiment, · εἷς οἰωνὸς ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης as to call him the worthier hero of the Iliad.' But to return to our passage: though Hector is a boaster, he is no reviler; and the suspicion created by this circumstance is increased by the utterly un-Homeric expression of 'daiμova dwow.' We may here observe, generally, that it would perhaps not be amiss if, in a second edition, the parts which have been rejected by the prince of the ancient critics, should be railed off from the rest of the text by the simple contrivance of a couple of brackets. We mean, of course, when he is right; and we take this opportunity of stating, that the longer and the closer we study the Venice Scholia, which contain to a great extent the observations of Aristarchus and of his expositors, the more we are convinced of his extreme scrupulosity in dealing with the text; a scrupulosity which made him, on several occasions, forbear to condemn very suspicious passages because he found them in so many of the copies. As specimens of the more offensive interpolations to which we should especially like to see these brackets put, we point out Book viii. verses 215, 216, where the pretended four horses of Hector (the heroes never had but two) have been drafted from various other studs, as, for instance, Lampus from that of Aurora, which is conclusive as to the judgment of the interpolator; Book viii. verses 597-603, which interrupt the sense to no purpose; Book viii. verses 631, 632, which have been taken from a daylight description in the 16th Book, and applied to a moon light scene in which crags, and peaks, and forests are undistinguishable; Book ix. verses 538, 542, where the Oos of the passage, and the honesty of Aristarchus ought to have weighed more with Bekker than the gossip of Plutarch, who did not see the absurdity of making Phoenix wish to turn parricide by way of removing the effects of a father's curse. To return to Book viii. : in verse 221, the mention of the wine-cup is owing to the desperate attempt of the grammarians, in spite of all the rules of construction, to take the wine from the horses, and give it to Hector. Did, then, these heroic horses, drink wine? No, but some bard in his headlong recitation, while thinking more of the modulation of his voice than of the sense of what he was repeating, introduced a line which subsequently found its way into some copies; and this line, in spite of the observation of the critics, was retained by the school of mumpsimus, and defended with that exquisite subtilty which has always distinguished it. In verse 230, it would be more exact to say that 'Juno on her throne Bounded with rage till great Olympus quaked,' than that she trembled; which conveys a notion of impotence. In verse 246, 'Enclosed between the trench, and tower, and ships,' the distinctness of the topography is marred. What the poet intended was this, that while Juno and Neptune thus conversed on Olympus, another scene was passing by the ships, which scene he proceeds to describe. We would therefore propose to read: 'Such converse held the Gods: but by the ships The verge between the rampart and the trench Was closely thronged with steeds and buckler'd men.' In verse 327, Thy fame on him, Though distant far, fresh glory shall reflect.' we miss the visual image of the original ἐϋκλείης ἐπίβησον. This might be preserved by writing 'be thine the deeds By which thy distant sire to glory mounts.' In verse 348, Castianeira ought to be represented as wedded from Esyme, and bearing her son in Troy. The expedition of Pallas and Juno is nobly done; but in verse 466 we decidedly object to the prosaic expression, 'For she is ever wont my schemes to thwart.' And upon the same principle to verse 511, 'The Trojans objects of your bitterest hate.' We We have elsewhere noticed, 'pugilistic skill,' 'suggestions offers,' and a few others of the like kind; and we feel pretty confident that Lord Derby will agree with us, that logical and technical terms should, as far as possible, be avoided, and that abstract nouns are a very poor equivalent for concrete and sensuous expressions. Upon this ground, we venture to offer another rendering of the lines (Book ix. verse 63), ἀφρήτωρ, ἀθέμιστος, ἀνέστιος ἐστιν ἐκεῖνος, et cat., in place of 'Religious, social, and domestic ties Would court the horrors of internal strife.' At verse 553 we read,— The sun now sunk beneath the ocean wave Thrice welcome, object of their earnest prayer.' As we cannot say the sun is sunk, we must not use sunk as a past participle active. We can say come for being come, because the language allows, and indeed compels us to suppress the auxiliary being in the few words where having has not yet entirely displaced it. Thus we can use fallen, risen, come, gone, set, in an active sense; by which we express not that an object has fallen and the like, but that it is fallen, &c. But when we say sunk, we are using the passive voice: we mean that somebody has sunk him or it, and thus the participle sunk can only be used of that which some one else has sent below the surface, and not of that which has descended thither of its own accord. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor' may be said of Lycidas, who was drowned, but cannot be said of the luminary to which he is compared. We also think that the concluding words have lost their force through transposition, and that it would be an improvement to condense the whole passage into something like the following attempt : 'The sun now sinking in the ocean drew The veil of Night o'er Earth; the Trojan host The conclusion of the 8th Book, with the exception of the two lines which are mentioned above as interpolated, is equal to any passage in the translation. The Laureate's version of the same passage is also very noble, but we must confess that the general general effect of it on ourselves is less Homeric. The whole of the 9th Book, which is one of the greatest in the work, has been rendered with admirable spirit. As examples of this we may point to the speech of Achilles, and to the passage in which Phoenix relates his own adventures, and the episode of Meleager. But we must notice that the expression δι ̓ Ἑλλάδος ευρυχόροιο is not through the breadth of Greece,' but through wideextending Thessaly, which is the only sense in which Hellas was used in those days. The 10th Book is especially interesting to us on account of the tradition preserved in the Venice Scholia, that it was composed by Homer as a separate poem, and afterwards incorporated by Pisistratus into the Iliad.' The mention of this anecdote would afford us a very handsome pretext for entering into the controversy touching the original condition of the Homeric poems, but we spare the reader and ourselves. There is but one point to which we would fain draw attention. If this fact is historical, as far as regards what Pisistratus did (and it rests upon just as good a foundation as the other doings of Pisistratus with regard to Homer), it follows that there was already an established continuity in the rest of the books, and that they existed as a whole before that age. It may be said that this wholeness was due to the decree of Solon, that the lays should be recited in their proper order, so that in the recitation (supposing always that this anecdote of Solon is not some orator's adaptation of the story of Pisistratus to a more popular character) this episode of the night-watch' had no place in the series. But even so, the continuity of the poem must have been a matter of independent tradition, and not inferred from the continuity of the subject, else why should the part in question have ever been omitted? To the question whether it is really by the author of the Iliad,' that is, whether it was written by the great master who combined all those scattered and rude legends about individual heroes into a single and wonderfully coherent poem, it is very difficult to return an answer. On the one hand we notice a great many words and some strange inflexions not to be found elsewhere in the Iliad,' and many of them not even in the 'Odyssey.' On the other hand, in the selection and grouping of the incidents, in the vividness of the narration, and in the characteristic propriety of the dialogue, it is inferior to no other book. To all these excellencies we think that Lord Derby has done justice; as, for instance, what can be more stately and Homeric than the commencement of the book. 'In night-long slumbers lay the other chiefs By By various cares oppress'd, sweet slumber fell. To Jove on high; deep groan'd his mighty heart.' 'On whom This deep humiliation Jove hath laid,' which does not render the sense of the original, we would propose 'Whom Jove Even at our birth hath visited with grief,' At all events, some attempt should be made to express ἐπὶ γιγνομένοισιν. It is evident even from the tense of in that κακότητα is misfortune in general. In verse 128 we should prefer Though thou be angry, yet the word shall out.' In verses 181-3, σχέτλιός ἐσσι γεραιέ is well rendered 'Beshrew thy heart, old man!' but we cannot say as much of the translation of σὺ δ' ἀμήχανος éoσi yepaιé, at the end of the same speech. We must, however, own ourselves fairly beaten in attempting to render the passage. Not so in verse 270, where we think that the pathos of the original will be better preserved by the version 'Divine Ulysses how should I forget?' The dodging to let Dolon pass is well expressed and clear, with the single exception of the words 'turn him toward the ships.' Dolon was already going in that direction, and the word εἰλεῖν, or rather εἴλειν (compare ἔλλειν), is used in the sense of urging or pressing. On the comparison of the mules outstripping the oxen Lord Derby says very justly, that it does not afford a very accurate criterion of the space interposed, which cannot be estimated without knowing the total distance within which the faster was to outstrip the slower team.' We can offer no solution of this difficulty either here or in the parallel |